Category: Rants

#oneaday, Day 275: Inexplicable Advertising

Advertising copywriters have a largely thankless task in front of them. Responsible for making people want to buy shit that they don't really want to, it's their job to come up with new and innovative ways to attract people to various products and inspire them to give them a try, usually by convincing people that they wouldn't possibly be able to live without said product.

Some advertisers and product designers take an entirely different tack, however, and lapse into the realms of the bizarre. Let's explore a few, shall we?

Options: Sexy Hot Chocolate

Hot chocolate: sexy. Confused nerd: less sexy.

Think of a nice warm mug of hot chocolate and what is the first thing that comes to mind? Perhaps snuggling under a nice warm blanket, maybe in front of a roaring fire. A large shaggy dog may be draped over the rug in front of said fire. Alternatively, you might be thinking of a camping trip, gathering around the campfire to warm yourselves before. Whatever specific image you have in your head, it's probably related to night-time, warmth, cosiness and possibly being about to go to bed. For sleeping. Not for naughty reasons.

So, then, let's take a look at the mint chocolate variety of Options hot chocolate.

"The flirty mint green kitten heels were madness at the garden party," proudly proclaims the sachet. "Mint" and "madness" are much larger than the others, so you have to look close to read the rest of it.

Which is probably just as well, because it's complete nonsense. What in the name of the nine Hells has mint green kitten heels (whatever they are) and garden parties got to do with a steaming hot chocolatey beverage? Why is there a woman in a slinky dress on the logo? She's not even wearing heels!

Options hot chocolate is delicious, by the way, despite all this.

Maoam Stripes Enjoy Back-Door Lovin'

The fact the orange is winking leads me to believe that this is EXACTLY what it looks like.

Maoam are weird fruity chew things that taste like fruit flavour and are very addictive. They also have a weird name that is impossible to type correctly first time every single time it becomes necessary to type them.

Now, perhaps the nature of the sweets dictated the artwork on them—a fusion of fruit flavours, or something—but is it really necessary to have a picture of a lime gleefully bumming an amputee orange on the wrapper? I vote "no".

These bizarre decisions pale in comparison to what you find in your average commercial break on digital or satellite TV these days, though:

Alexander the Asshole… I mean Meerkat

For those of you outside the UK, this irritating twat that a frankly depressing number of people seem to find utterly hilarious is the product of an advertising campaign for an insurance price comparison website called "Compare the Market". The "joke" is that "Compare the Meerkat" sounds a bit like "Compare the Market". If you're a complete retard who can't speak properly.

The above video is for his book. Yes, his book. A character dreamed up to sell insurance has a book out. I guess this should be a heartwarming story of a new national comedic treasure. But… oh, for heaven's sake, it's a mildly racist advertising campaign with an annoying catchphrase for—let's not forget this fact—insurance—and the world is going crazy for it. Actually, the world is just going crazy.

Go Compare? Go Away

I don't think anything else needs to be said, apart from pointing out insurance price comparison websites' predilection for changing one of the most boring things in existence into one of the most irritating things in existence.

The Credit Idiot

"Hey, boss, shall we hire some actors?"

"Nah, fuck it, hire the guy from the takeaway around the corner. He's cheap and he's always wanted to be on TV."

Seriously? All these ads have convinced me is that I never want to use any of those services, ever. Yet when I do actually need a service like that, the only sites I can think of are these ones because of their incredibly irritating adverts. Which I guess is sort of the point.

Oh well.

And people wonder why I don't watch much TV.

#oneaday, Day 253: Pay-Per-Everything

I came to a realisation today. I have a thing about the word "monetize" (or, arguably, "monetise" if you want to be English about it, although the latter is not recognised by a British English spellchecker). This is not news to those of you who have been following this blog for some time. Some of you may even recall the Money Robot, star of Day 128 on this blog, and, of course, the thing that goes around monetizing everything in sight by applying green electricity to their genital areas, assuming they have genitals.

But, as I say, I came to a realisation today. And my problem is not with the word itself as it is with the fact that we even need a word for this concept at all. "Monetize", after all, pretty much means "convince people that it is acceptable to pay money for". And sure. There are some things out there that could stand to be charged for—certain content online, for example, could be charged for in order to make sure that writers could actually get paid for once. The iPad, Kindle and other devices like them are doing a lot to help people think about how they consume content—a move away from the whole "EVERYTHING SHOULD BE FREE!" philosophy that the Internet has embraced for so long and a move towards "most things should be free, but really good stuff should be an appropriate price".

At least that's the theory of how it should work. How monetization works in practice is that you get people charging you to go to the toilet at railway stations. You get a 30p "convenience charge" for paying your parking fees via phone instead of via small change in a machine—change which some poor sod will have to come and collect at some point rather than an automated robot who steals your credit card numbers over the phone, I might add. You get charged £30 to disconnect your broadband (at least you do if you go with Orange Home, fuckers). And Endsleigh Insurance (also fuckers) wanted to charge me £85 for the privilege of cancelling my home insurance, all because I had moved house just after the policy had renewed, ignoring the fact I'd been paying them for the last ten years. Let's not even get started on bank charges, where they take the money you haven't got in order to punish you for not having any money.

You get the picture. Not everything being monetized is good. And that's why I think the fact it's happening so much that we need a new word to describe the concept is very much a bad thing. We don't need to pay for everything. I pay a bloody fortune to travel by train in rubbish, smelly, drunk-infested conditions so the least I should be able to expect is the opportunity to have a piss for free at the other end. Conversely, I'd be more than happy to pay for some exclusive content, eBooks or virtual magazines delivered to the iPad I don't have. It's all a question of value.

You may argue that the ability to have a piss is inherently more essential and therefore valuable than an eBook. But technically I can have a piss anywhere. The charge on the toilet is not stopping me from, say, pissing myself. The nice policeman standing on the corner might, however.

The eBook or virtual magazine, however, has had love, care and attention ploughed into it and therefore, it's only fair that the writers and producers should receive some recompense for that. So more premium, high-quality content, please, and less in the way of "convenience charges".

THANKS.

#oneaday, Day 252: 5 Social Norms That Need To Die The Hell Out

There are some things which have become so firmly entrenched in normal society that we just don't question them. We don't necessarily like them, but we certainly don't question them if someone happens to bring them up. They're so well-known that countless comedy routines have drawn attention to them over the years; so much so that many of them are now clichés. That doesn't stop people writing about them and perpetuating said clichés, though, as I'm about to do right now.

So without further ado, let me present Five Inexplicable Social Norms that the World can Really Do Without™.

The toilet seat thing

Alluded to above. Roughly 50% of the world's population, give or take, have to take a piss standing up. Well, they don't have to. But gentlemen who choose to urinate whilst in a seated position are generally scorned and looked upon as some sort of weirdo. For a chap, sitting is for pooing and standing is for pissing. Would the ladies out there who whinge about toilet seats being left up prefer it if said gentlemen just left it down all the time and pissed all over it instead? No? Then consider this: the seat has a hinge on it so it can be lifted up and put down. If it is in the incorrect position for one's desired toilet activity, one need simply use one's hand to move said seat to the correct position.

While we're on, those toilets whose seats don't stay up can die in a fire. Having to hold on to the toilet seat with one hand and directing one's flow with the other often feels rather precarious and I feel that anyone who inadvertently spills in a place they shouldn't whilst under such arduous pissing conditions should not be held responsible.

Man flu

Apparently, guys aren't allowed to get ill any more. Whether it's a tickly cough, some form of debilitating brain cancer, ebola or itchy scrot, it seems that everyone is quick to cry "Man flu!" at the first opportunity. The zombie apocalypse will not come from some sort of biohazard outbreak at a local lab. No, it will come from the man who caught zombie disease, went to hospital, was accused of just having "man flu" and sent on his way.

Overenthusiastic use of the word "random"

"OMG! I'm such a random person really. We went out and had a drink and it was like OMG! Random!"

No. "Random" means… well… random. Completely by chance. Out of all the possibilities that are there, everything has an equal possibility of happening. It is not "random" that you met that hot girl at The Dungeon one night, because you knew she was there. Your night out was not "so random", because you'd planned it weeks in advance with your compadres. You are not a "random" person, because otherwise your conversations would run something along the lines of "Cabbage! 352! Cocks. Horatio! England. Belching squirrel. 976!"

Settling for second-best

This could be applied to so, so many things but I'd like to particularly refer to the world of employment. How many people do you (yes, you!) know personally who regularly bitch and moan about their job, their colleagues, how much they hate what they're doing, how they "wish" they could do something "better" and then never do a damn thing about it? Some people don't have a clue what it is what they want to do. To those people I say: think harder. If you are sitting in an office surrounded by other people who clearly want to slit their wrists or take far more regular toilet breaks than a normal person because they're actually going there to cry for five minutes at a time, then you are probably in The Wrong Job.

Being unemployed has been a festival of suckitude, but I just know that if I was in that aforementioned office, while money might be coming in the way I'd be feeling would be ten times worse, because I'd feel trapped and unable to pursue the things I really do want to do. (Talking of which, I have a job interview for a job I really do want tomorrow. Wish me luck.)

Embarrassment over bettering oneself

I went out for a run today, but felt the familiar pang of anyone who is unfit going out in public to exercise: "what if anyone sees me?" This immediately jumps up to something doubly worthy of panic if you are doing some form of exercise which has the potential to hold up traffic, such as cycling along country lanes. But running! People will see you doing exercise, and they will laugh at you. Because going out and doing something about your own fitness is inexplicably somehow more shameful than just walking down the street gasping and wheezing after climbing a flight of five steps.

This whole thing also seems to apply to kids in school, many of whom seem to see success as being somehow shameful. But that, of course, is a topic I have waxed upon at great detail many times in the past.

So I know I certainly wouldn't shed any tears if any of the above norms disappeared overnight. Perhaps they're uniquely British things. In which case… anyone want to help me get a visa?

#oneaday, Day 251: Teamwork, Do It Together

I'm going to quote a LazyTown song at you and there is nothing you can damn well do about it.

Links in a chain
Tracks for a train
They're always better together.
A cocoa in a mug
A kiss and a hug
They're always better together.
When nothing seems to fit
And you just want to quit
Teamwork, do it together
Teamwork, friends forever
We're all for one and one for all, we'll—

Okay, enough already. Even I'm feeling a little nauseous*. But it's an apt introduction to the matter I would like to talk about today, which is collaborating, working together, being a team player, whatever you want to call it.

In life, teamwork is essential, even for the most inept recluse there is. At some point, they're going to have to deal with other people. So it may as well be a pleasant experience for everyone involved.

The thing I don't understand is why so many people don't seem to get this. For example, I was talking to a friend the other day and it seems that a work colleague had gone behind her back and caused an unpleasant, tense situation when in fact all that was needed was a quiet, friendly word. In fact, given the situation in question, even that wasn't warranted at all, but this isn't the time or place to discuss that.

But it seems to happen over and over again; I've lost count of the number of times I've heard friends comment about the stresses of working with other people, either because they don't pull their weight, or because they're the sort of person described above, who is only concerned with making themselves look good and balls to how everyone else feels.

If you'll indulge me a moment, here is something which truly can be learned from the world of video games. I was enjoying a friendly game of Halo: Reach with some friends earlier, and we were playing Team Slayer. For the benefit of my readers out there who don't play games at all, an explanation: this mode splits eight players into two teams of four and tasks each team with blowing seven shades of snot out of each other until one team or the other has scored fifty kills. Very simple. And yet what many people who play it don't seem to realise is that by working together—simply a case of sticking with someone else and protecting them, and occasionally telling other team members where opponents are—success can be pretty much guaranteed, at least until the other team figures out the same thing. Which often doesn't happen.

It's the same in reality, only with less shooting each other in the face with rocket launchers. Usually. Rather than striking out as a "lone wolf" that just happens to be part of a larger venture, working together with others is a far more sure-fire way to get things done. Things get done a lot quicker and everyone is a lot happier as a result. So I have to wonder why so many people try and put up barriers to this sort of collaboration. Whether it's wilfully ignoring things that they're told, making themselves inaccessible, refusing to listen to feedback or simply not chipping in their bit of effort at crunch time, it makes life unpleasant for everyone. Those who are spurned by the git who isn't helping end up feeling bitterness and resentment. And said git often starts to feel superior, like they don't "need" to get involved.

I'm very fortunate in that all the ventures I'm currently involved with are very much team efforts run by people who are friends with mutual respect for one another, and people who talk to each other. There's no bitchiness, no backstabbing, no resentment. I think. Unless I'm causing it.

Oh God, am I the git?

* inserted to draw attention away from the fact that I have listened to the LazyTown soundtrack on Spotify far more times than is really healthy. This is just between you and me.

#oneaday, Day 247: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Twitter broke earlier today. This in itself is nothing unusual, as the existence of the term "failwhale" will attest. But this time it was partly a result of some new changes that the service made, particularly with regard to posting links.

Twitter recently launched its own link-shortening service, called "t.co". This is one of the shortest link-shorteners out there, and when characters are a precious commodity as they are on Twitter, that's really important.

Unfortunately, some clever young person discovered that by using t.co it was, in fact, possible to embed HTML code and, worse, JavaScript in these links. It was also possible to format tweets, change their colour and black them out.

Said exploiter quickly discovered that by blacking out a tweet and adding a "mouseover" JavaScript event to automatically retweet the exploit, post giant text on the screen or in some cases, redirect to websites you wouldn't want anyone to catch you on ever whenever a user moved their cursor over the blocked text, they could cause absolute chaos. Thankfully, most people got wise to the exploit pretty quickly and retreated to the safety of Twitter client apps, as it only affected users on the website itself. Of course, there were a few people who started screaming "OMG VIRUS!!!" and panicking, but most of them were put in their place pretty quickly with a simple, calm explanation (hah, right) that an exploit and a virus are two very different things. And Twitter stepped in to plug the security hole reasonably quickly, too. So the whole thing was over within a matter of hours.

The main point of this, though, is that it wouldn't have happened at all without the new functionality that Twitter was offering. It seems that every single time something new and potentially awesome appears, there is at least one person out there who wants… no, seemingly needs to break it. Why? Because they can.

This explains the existence of "glitchers", people who deliberately play video games in order to break them. It explains the existence of software pirates, who are out to break copy protection and DRM on software. It explains the existence of hackers, people who write viruses and spammers. And, indirectly, it's the reason why every single time you turn on Windows you have fifteen bajillion updates to install.

This is all getting a bit tiresome now. It's such a shame that things that are new must seemingly go through the "initiation" of being broken by some idiot sitting in his pants in his basement, probably masturbating furiously as he watches the chaos unfold before his eyes. Because you just know it's a "he", too. (I'm all for equality, but when it comes to stupid, pointless and inconvenient things to do with computers, it's always a guy.)

Thankfully, the world seems adequately set up to deal with such dribbling idiots these days. We have spam filters, virus scanners, scripts to clean out malicious code from websites. Companies have teams to fix broken functionality like we've seen here. And of course, it's easy to say that things should be tested more thoroughly before release. But there's no way you can predict every single possible stupid thing that some member of the human race will try and do. If we could, no-one would ever go outside and the world and everything in it would be covered in sponge just in case we fell over and hurt ourselves and/or tried to kill someone else with something.

So if you know anyone who's ever come up with one of these exploits, or anyone who's ever ruined a Nice Thing for anyone else, do the world a favour and go and punch them really, really hard in the testicles.

#oneaday, Day 242: Original and Best

I p-p-picked up a Penguin earlier (note to Americans: this is a chocolate biscuit, not an actual penguin nor a low-cost paperback reprint of a classic novel) and was dismayed to see a word on the wrapper that seems to be becoming more and more common on the foodstuffs of my childhood: "Original".

To me, the word "Original" written on something implies "Hey! You used to like this. But very soon, we're going to do something that utterly destroys your memories of it, like adding fifteen new flavours completely unnecessarily!" The word "Original" implies that there are soon to be "non-Original" varieties. While I certainly wouldn't be averse to the idea of a chocolate mint or chocolate orange Penguin bar, it does seem somewhat unnecessary given that a number of other chocolate biscuit maufacturers have the whole "flavoured chocolate biscuit" thing pretty well stitched up. Similarly, Penguin have had the whole "chocolate-coated chocolate biscuit with chocolate cream filling" thing working for them for many years now. So why the change?

The ultimate sacrilege of this type I've seen is Rice Krispies. Rice Krispies are Rice Krispies. You can customise them with milk and sugar and those interminably homosexual mascots they have, but they're still Rice Krispies.

Not any more! They're "Rice Krispies: Original", which again implies that there are soon to be "non-Original" Rice Krispies invading our cereal cupboards. The thing is, non-Original Rice Krispies already exist. They're called Ricicles (sugary Rice Krispies) and Coco Pops (chocolatey Rice Krispies). So are we going to lose these established, recognisable and, to some (who really enjoy cereal, like, a bit too much), beloved brands? Perhaps.

Why does this happen, though? Perhaps it's part of the growing culture we have where Choice is Good. Yes, Choice is Good. But there are some things where we don't really need quite so much of it. Breakfast cereals and chocolate biscuits being two such examples. Mobile phone packages and varieties of bottled water are two more. Electricity tariffs. Types of coffee. Whether I want chillisaucesalad on my kebab. Too much pressure!

The upshot of all this is that people begin expecting choice in everything they do, even when it's completely inappropriate to do so. Look at education; both the Government and parents seem to expect teachers to be able to deliver a personalised, customised experience for every child. There's even an official "programme" for it: Every Child Matters. And yes, they do. But there are 30 children in an average classroom. And one teacher. Perhaps one or two assistants. Have you ever tried to get thirty different people, some of whom already have attention-deficit disorders, to do a selection of different things? It's immensely difficult and nigh on impossible. But it's expected. Because Choice is Good. Personalisation is Good. People should be able to have the experiences they want, when they want them.

So, with that in mind, balls to non-Original Penguins. They're destroying our education system.

Possibly.

#oneaday, Day 233: Keep On Movin'

I hate moving house. I really hate moving house. And yet it's one of those things that becomes necessary at least several times during your life. Still, I feel like I have done it more than many people, largely due to the fact I moved pretty much every year since starting university, until I ended up in this current place, which I actually lasted about two years in.

I didn't move every year through choice in most cases. Most of the time there were extenuating circumstances which caused the move. I moved after my first year at university because I wanted to live in a house, not a hall of residence. I moved after my second year because the flat I was in was a shithole and the cheeky bastard landlord put the rent, which was already expensive, up. I moved after my third year because my housemate was leaving town because she'd finished university and I was staying on to do my teacher training. I moved after my fourth year because I was no longer a student. I moved after that year because the beautiful, lovely flat I was living in was reclaimed by its landlord for her daughter. I moved after the next year because my housemate was, again, moving and also the house we were in had damp, mould and smelled slightly of gas. I moved after the next year because I was in Aldershot and was hunting down a job back in Southampton. Also, Aldershot is a shithole. I moved after the next year because the flat I was staying in had damp and mould. Again. And the circumstances under which I am leaving this particular place have already been well documented elsewhere on this blog.

So I'm pretty tired of it. There are a bunch of things that always, always cause stress to do with moving. First of all is never having enough boxes, and ending up having to spend more on boxes than on anything else you've ever spent money on ever. I remember when I was younger, our local supermarket used to have a little "pen" near its cash tills with hundreds of discarded boxes that you could just take for yourself. I haven't seen a supermarket do this for ages. It's probably some sort of Health and Safety Hazard. What if someone gets trapped inside a box? What if it's used to carry a bomb? What if Solid Snake is around?

So boxes have to be acquired via alternative means, be it hassling friends for them, finding them discarded in disgusting places or actually purchasing them for vast expense from packaging stores. I went for the latter option largely for convenience more than anything else, and at least it means I've got some decent-quality, new boxes that (hopefully) won't fall apart when I'm lifting the bastards into a van later.

Then of course there's the packing process itself. Bundle things into a box, seal it up and then suddenly, inevitably, something catches your eye. Something which should be in that box you just sealed up. Something which could easily fit in that box you just sealed up. But it's not in the box. It's sitting there on the side, mocking you quietly. So you swear profusely, bundle the thing into another box, consider writing the fact that you've bundled said thing into the "wrong" box onto the side of its new home, figure that nah, you'll remember where you put it, pack it in there and then six months later when you still haven't unpacked half your boxes and realise you really need that thing that you put in the wrong box, you discover that you can't, in fact, remember where you put said thing because you didn't write it on the box.

As part of the packing process, you also reach the inevitable "small bits" stage. No, this is not a euphemism. This is a reference to the stage in the packing where you've pretty much cleared all your bookcases and cupboards and all that is left are hundreds, thousands, of small little bits and pieces, none of which can be justifiably assigned a complete box. So you end up with at least one box marked "JUNK" which contains miscellaneous paraphernalia of such diversity that should you ever dare dip your hand into it, you'll come out with something completely different and unrelated every time. And inevitably, there's too much "JUNK" for one box, making you think you should have perhaps organised it a bit better, but it's too late now.

Then you have to move said boxes and furniture into a van. That's today's job. And the van will be arriving shortly. So I'd probably better get on with it.

#oneaday, Day 225: This Post is Controversial

Want to get your voice heard on the Internet? Then you'd better have something contentious to say, or at the very least something to say about something contentious.

I've seen it myself on this blog. The day I wrote about Kevin Smith's experiences with Southwest Airlines (day 28, if you're keeping score) was one of the highest-traffic days that I've ever seen. Granted, this being a personal blog which not that many people know about, that still wasn't very many people. But it was enough to make a noticeable spike on that handy little pageviews graph that WordPress helpfully provides you with.

And today. I happened to tweet earlier that Xbox LIVE's prices were going up by $10 a year. Thinking nothing of it at the time, I returned about an hour later to discover that this tweet, out of the other 16,740 that there are (I know, I know) was retweeted by something in the region of three billion people. All right, that's an exaggeration. But you get my point.

And then, an article published by a colleague over on Kombo has seen one of our highest ever "temperature" ratings on gaming news aggregator N4G. The subject of the article? "Top Ten Most Overrated Games". Compare this to an article I wrote on the subject of women in the games industry, which attracted ill-informed, stupid comments from people who obviously had read nothing more than the title, and you'll see that at times, the Internet is not the place for reasoned discourse. Incidentally, this isn't a slight against Lucas' great article, which actually makes some fair points.

A friend and colleague described services such as Digg and N4G as "places where lazy people go to yell at each other over stories they didn't read concerning topics they don't understand". It's sad, but it's true. It's also an awesome quote. Thank you, Brad.

So it seems that in order to get people interested and reading what you have to say, it either has to be a contentious opinion, or an opinion on a contentious topic. It's possibly a side-effect of the celebrity culture I discussed the other day, where apparently our own lives aren't interesting enough and therefore we must go look for scandal, opportunities to accuse "the system" of screwing us and chances to argue and flame at every opportunity. Are our own lives really that boring, though? Do people really have that little to say about themselves? Should I turn this into a blog about what the latest celebrity idiots have been getting up to recently?

No. Because if everyone goes about doing that, it just makes the situation worse. I'm writing here for me. I write about what I want to write about, when I want to write about it… so long as it's still one thing a day. The fact that other people read and enjoy it is a happy bonus. And it gives me some faith that the Internet isn't solely populated by dribbling spastics.

Just mostly.

#oneaday, Day 217: "Book? LOL!"

I forget the exact circumstances of when I came across the quote in this post's title. It may have been on some form of social networking website, or dating site, or something like that. But it was a good few years back now.

The context of the quote was in one of those sections you get on pretty much all online profiles that asks you to list your favourite music, films, TV shows and books. This person's favourite books were listed as "book? lol".

That struck me as rather sad, but perhaps a little unsurprising given the general attention span of most people these days. Why sit down with a book which delays gratification and requires active use of the brain when you can be immediately bombarded with information via TV and the Internet?

It's an age-old argument of course, and one which has probably been running ever since every new information-giving technology came along. However, it seems particularly ironic in the context of the Internet, given that much of it is, in fact, text. Sure, there are pretty pictures and buttons that fart when you click on them and pornography, but it's still fundamentally built on text. You're reading text right now. Is your head hurting yet?

The fact that everyone has a voice on the Internet is one of those things that is debatable as to whether it is a Good Thing or not. But as part of having that voice, everyone has the opportunity to give their thoughts and expand on them as much as they want to. The sad thing is, though, in many cases, people don't feel like they have the time to read (or write) a full, well-considered argument. Instead, they denounce it as a "wall of text" and choose not to read it.

It happens in video games, too. A friend of mine once said that he couldn't get through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney because there was "too much reading". It's a game about a lawyer. I'm not sure what else he was expecting.

As a writer, as someone who crafts language and bends it to my will in the name of pretentiousness, self-expression, catharsis and humour, this is sad. The English language is a powerful tool that can say many things. As, indeed, are other languages. But it seems that for many these days, the priority is for quick, snappy, "efficient" communication. And sure, there are situations in which this is entirely appropriate. But I say that shouldn't be the norm. People shouldn't be afraid to speak their mind in as much length as they wish.

My mind is particularly drawn to the early days of the Squadron of Shame. Long before we started producing our podcast, we ran lengthy discussion threads on a variety of games on 1up.com's Radio forum. We'd started as a result of one of the 1up Radio features, so that was our spiritual home. Many of the people who populated that forum were articulate sorts who agreed with my thoughts above, so there were plenty of like-minded individuals there who enjoyed taking part in our discussions and posting their own "walls of text".

But one day, the Powers That Be at 1up decided that it would be a great idea to merge all the forums into "Games" and "Not Games". This meant that lengthy, in-depth discussion threads from groups such as the Squadron were crammed into the same space as "OMG HALO IS BETTR THAN KILZONE". Naturally, this led to problems. In one of the last discussions we had on those boards—on the subject of the peculiar PS2 game Psi-Ops—the posting was almost immediately derailed by a particularly notorious troll who posted "OMG FUCKING MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT" in giant red letters. Said "wall of text" was maybe six or seven paragraphs long and was interesting to read, but as soon as troll boy showed his face, the discussion went off track, not helped by many people (including myself) rising to his bait.

It's a pity that to some people the desire to speak in detail, at length and to produce a coherent argument is seen as a negative thing. Personally I would have thought that a forum—by its very nature an asynchronous method of communication in which people can take their time to consider their responses—was the ideal environment in which to have these lengthy discussions. But apparently not.

This is perhaps an unnecessarily negative picture, of course. There are still people who read books. There are still people who like to post more than five words at a time. There are still people who don't decide to ignore all the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar "just because it's the Internet"—who came up with that stupid idea, anyway? It's just a pity that, at times, they seem to be declining in number.

Oh well. If you read through all that, you can count yourself amongst the élite!

#oneaday, Day 216: I Wish The X Was Ex

So I believe the new series of The X-Factor kicked off tonight. I'm saying this purely based on a few comments on Twitter that I happened to witness earlier on, and not by having watched it at all. The reason I don't watch it? The X-Factor incites the kind of burning rage and despair at society that is matched only by how I feel during major football tournaments. It's one of the main reasons I don't watch TV at all. Not The X-Factor specifically. But shows like it. And by God there are a lot of them.

And they're always the same. It's all very well saying that it's Just Entertainment, and that other forms of entertainment are just as guilty of the offences that The X-Factor commits.

But no. The X-Factor is pretty much identical every year, bar a couple of minor alterations to the format and the inevitable fake "controversy" over who is going to be a judge.

We start with the auditions. Everyone who watches the show uses the auditions section as the main reason to convince people who don't watch the show to watch the show. "It's funny!" they'll say. "There are really shit people sometimes!"

If I want to watch shit people singing, I'll go direct a school choir. I don't need it on my television. And it's not funny. It's just embarrassing. Yes, these people did it to themselves by signing up for the show. But there's no need for the "clever editing" (hah!) that goes into the show to focus on them quite so much. And what are we supposed to think? The show inevitably builds them up with one of its famous sob stories, then knocks them down flat when the judges decide to brand them "awful". What are we, as viewers, supposed to take away from that? "Hah! Look! This person's had an awful life! But they're shit at singing and quite ugly, so let's laugh at them and their misfortune! They're going to die alone!"

Then, as I recall, there are "Boot Camp" sections, where the judges get to show us all how obnoxiously rich they are out as a result of the clone armies they've built over the years. This is ostensibly the "training" section, where the performers get to learn how to, well, perform better. Funny how we rarely see much in the way of training. Instead, we see when they fuck it up, because that's Better Television.

After that we're into the interminable, never-ending live shows. Every week, the remaining grinning idiots, who have had all semblance of personality sandblasted out of them by this point, come on stage, sing an incredibly twee and wet version of an existing song, listen to some "criticism" from the judges (which inevitably involves one or more of the key phrases "I liked it", "I think you could be the next big thing", "You've got the X-Factor", "You… could win this show" or equivalents towards the negative end of the spectrum) which doesn't actually offer any constructive advice at all, and then bugger off the stage either crying or going "YES!"

During the live shows, the black woman with the incredibly powerful voice will inevitably almost get to the final and then not quite make it. The "novelty act" which everyone thinks is Really Funny will be kept in for an inexplicably long time, despite being a one-joke act who don't actually have any talent whatsoever. During the final, the performer who is the better singer will be kicked out in favour of the performer who is more generic and boring. And during the final, the "Winner's Single" will be revealed to be a dirge-like ballad that makes everyone who listens to it want to kill themselves.

After the show has finished, the Winner's Single will be released, it will sell like the proverbial hot cakes for a few weeks then disappear without trace for at least six months, after which time the winner will then release their "Stunning Debut Album!" by which time the whole world has forgotten who they are, at least it would have had they not been in the tabloids and on Sky News every five minutes every time they pick their bum or scratch their nose. As a result of this, the obsessive fans become like the people I talked about yesterday, and the people who don't watch the show and have no time for manufactured pop nonsense are about ready to commit an act of terrorism.

So there you go. I've saved you having to watch it at all this year. The X-Factor can fuck off and burn in a fire.